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❌ US-ANGLO CAPITALISM
 EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌
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An inconvenient truth? UK government censors state-sanctioned report on frackingPublished time: August 11, 2014 13:05
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| Fracking’s next frontier: Energy giants seek bigger offshore payoffs with deep-water fracking fleets David Wethe, Bloomberg News | August 7, 2014 | Last Updated: Aug 7 2:59 PM ET Energy companies are taking their controversial fracking operations from the land to the sea — to deep waters off the U.S., South American and African coasts. Cracking rocks underground to allow oil and gas to flow more freely into wells has grown into one of the most lucrative industry practices of the past century. The technique is also widely condemned as a source of groundwater contamination. The question now is how will that debate play out as the equipment moves out into the deep blue. For now, caution from all sides is the operative word. |
As one LNG project moves forward, another caught in regulatory tussle Sempra Energy and Cheniere want to construct export terminals By Rhiannon Meyers and Ryan Holeywell |
U.S. oil exports reach milestone: June shipments highest since 1957
By Reuters Media on Aug 7, 2014 at 11:47 p.m.
NEW YORK — News this week that U.S. crude oil exports had surged in June to reach the highest since 1957 raised a question not often asked: Why did U.S. exports suddenly surge, then just as quickly drop, nearly six decades ago?
In March 1957, the United States exported a record 455,000 bpd of crude, up from just 40,000 bpd in the same month a year earlier, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed. A year later, exports were back to just 27,000 bpd.
Unlike the current export boom, fueled by new shale oil drilling technology that has unleashed an unprecedented revival in U.S. production, the abrupt rise and fall in the 1950s was the result of political turmoil in the Middle East.
In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the waterway constructed some 90 years earlier connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. The 101-mile seaway was a crucial link between big oil producers and European refiners, ferrying some 1.2 million bpd to Western Europe, particularly to Britain and France.
The move was seen as punishment for the United States and Britain withdrawing funding for the Aswan High Dam, but it also stung European nations who were losing sway over former colonies and led to a global struggle known as the Suez Crisis.
Israel, France and Britain moved troops into the region to assert their control, bringing commercial oil flows through the canal to a halt — with dire consequences for Europe. Alternative routes were far too long to compensate.
“(The oil) could go around the Cape Horn, but that was difficult and there was limited shipping capacity,” said Dr. Philip K. Verleger Jr., president of consultancy PKVerleger LLC and a former advisor to President Carter.
At the time of the nationalization, Britain had around six weeks’ worth of supply of oil on hand, and France had only slightly more, according to Rose McDermott’s book Risk Tasking in International Politics.
Amid pressure from Washington and growing economic strain, oil-starved nations in Europe removed their troops from territory and the United States started pushing crude oil across the Atlantic. By November 1956, oil exports jumped to 285,000 bpd from 47,000 bpd a month prior, according to the EIA data.
The Canal reopened in April 1957, allowing Europe to resume direct shipments and bringing a quick halt to U.S. exports. ...
The current rise in exports has been more measured and is likely to be much longer-lasting. Shipments from U.S. shores in June rose to 389,000 bpd, a 35 percent increase from May, with most of that oil going to Canada.
But while the exports have recently reached modern-day highs, they are still a much smaller fraction of U.S. supply.
“Back then, a couple thousand barrels a day would be a big deal. But now, we’ve got a story of the North Dakota and Texas boom and a production figure of some 8.5 million barrels a day.”
http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/content/us-oil-exports-reach-milestone-june-shipments-highest-1957
current export boom, fueled by new shale oil drilling technology that has unleashed an unprecedented revival in U.S. production,
Oil shale is unevenly distributed around the world. The United States possesses roughly 70% of world oil shale deposits, with the vast majority located in the Green River shale regions in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Fears over domestic energy supplies sparked small oil shale booms in the 1950’s due to Cold War energy concerns, and again in the 1970’s as a result of the Arab oil embargo. But by 1980, the federal government had assembled a pot of subsidies, price supports, loans, and other incentives luring major oil companies to make substantial investments in the Piceance Basin area of western Colorado. This boom would be short lived. On May 2, 1982 -- “Black Sunday” -- ExxonMobil pulled out of oil shale due to falling oil prices and vanishing federal subsidies. The economy of western Colorado collapsed and the entire state of Colorado entered an economic slump as a result.
Reemergence of oil shale
Oil shale has returned to the world stage due to rising oil prices and concerns about national energy independence. What has not changed is the lack of a technology capable of turning oil shale rocks into transportation fuels in a commercially viable manner. [SOURCE]
Why Japan Will Drive Global LNG Growth There is little reason to expect Japan’s reactors will offset its voracious new appetite for LNG. |
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7/30/2014 @ 6:00AM |672 views
How One Billionaire's Bet On LyondellBasell Turned Into The Greatest Deal In Wall St. History
This story appears in the August 18, 2014 issue of Forbes.
Billionaire financier Len Blavatnik’s bet on LyondellBasell has netted him a personal profit of nearly $8 billion. He says there’s more to come.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/07/30/the-greatest-deal-of-all-time/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
A Ukrainian-born American citizen who grew up in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 at the age of 21, he later got his M.B.A. at Harvard.
Blavatnik made his first fortune with a former classmate in Russia, Viktor Vekselberg, in oil and aluminum deals during the anything-goes post-Soviet days.
Blavatnik’s biggest scores in Russia were oil company TNK-BP, a joint venture with British Petroleum that was eventually bought by Rosneft for $55 billion, and Sual, an aluminum producer that merged with the larger Rusal.
Chemical companies that had nothing to do with Russia would be his next big thing. He paid full price, putting down $1.1 billion to purchase Basell in a $5 billion leveraged buyout in 2005. Then he tried, and failed, to buy other chemical companies, including Huntsman International.
The revolution that changed everything for Blavatnik ... and LyondellBasell originated in the thin fissures of shale rock filled with oil and natural gas reserves throughout the United States. Throughout the last decade drillers pioneered new techniques of exploiting rock formations with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to draw out the petrochemicals trapped within. As a result, the U.S. became one of the world’s largest sources of cheap natural gas almost overnight, with prices falling from highs of $13 per million British thermal units to a $3 to $4 range today. This dramatic drop in prices proved a huge boon to dozens of industries, none more so than the chemical business–and few more than LyondellBasell.
LyondellBasell is a top producer of ethylene, which it upgrades into the plastic known as polyethylene, used in everything from food packaging to trash bags and hard hats. The company operates six facilities (known as “crackers”) to produce ethylene in the U.S. and four in Europe. Profits from ethylene and its derivative chemicals and coproducts are the core of LyondellBasell’s earnings.
Ethane, refined from natural gas, and naphtha, a crude oil derivative, are the prime raw materials used to produce ethylene. Starting in 2007, U.S. drillers were finding natural gas everywhere. By 2012 the price of ethane had fallen from 90 cents per gallon to 30 cents, giving U.S. chemical producers a huge advantage over foreign competitors in Europe and Asia that are dependent on pricey oil-based naphtha as a feedstock. The gap between the two supercharged LyondellBasell’s profitability.
LyondellBasell’s decades-old crackers in Clinton, Iowa and Morris, Ill., for example, are the only ones in the Midwest–and are situated near natural gas liquid pipelines and a hub in Kansas, home of some of the cheapest ethane in America. Almost overnight they were transformed, churning out profit margins of 32 cents per pound compared to European naphtha-based ethylene, which is barely even profitable. “It’s improbable that anyone could have foreseen the full impact of the shale revolution,” says Blavatnik. “But Jim had some experience and insight through his work at ConocoPhillips that I think helped.”
UKRAINEAnyone interested in Ukraine, CHECK THIS OUT: Joe Biden's son, Hunter, just joined the board of the largest Ukraine gas producer Burisma Holdings http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-25/company-which-joe-bidens-son-director-prepares-drill-shale-gas-east-ukraine |
BBC Article
Source - BBC
28 July 2014 Last updated at 01:43 |
Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, Dutch Version
Brookings Institution - here.
Anti-fracking activists rally with opponents of LNG export facility
July 14, 2014
On Sunday afternoon, about 2,000 people marched in the heat of mid-summer Washington,D.C., from a rally on the national mall to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the first-ever demonstration at FERC. They were protesting what they called FERC’s rubber stamp approval process for an export facility for liquified natural gas, or LNG, in a heavily populated area of southern Maryland called Cove Point. It’s one of 14 such proposed facilities around the country. Much of the natural gas slated for export would be extracted through the process of fracking, which is already happening in the Marcellus Shale formation located in parts of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. That’s leading anti-fracking groups to form an alliance with opponent of LNG export terminals. Melinda Tuhus reports from D.C.
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Residents and advocates like the Chesapeake Climate Action Network – CCAN – which organized the rally, want FERC to require Dominion, the owner of the liquefied natural gas terminal, to do an Environmental Impact Statement or EIS, in addition to the less comprehensive Environmental Assessment it conducted. A FERC spokesperson said she couldn’t comment spcifically on Cove Point, but that if a full study was done when the site was developed several years ago as an LNG import, not export, facility, another one would not be required since the new proposal does not exceed the footprint of the existing facility.
Mike Tidwell, founder and executive director of CCAN, said the export plans involve “completely different industrial machines, totally different process, much bigger, much more dangerous, and FERC doesn’t think there should be an Environmental Impact Statement. They think the EIS from 2006 for a $700 million facility is enough to cover, in 2014, a $3.8 billion facility. It’s ridiculous.” Tidwell said this is the only LNG proposal in the country that’s planned for a populated area.[WOW .... IT'S A CORPORATE FREE FOR ALL & STAKES HIGH.]
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One of the speakers at the rally was Sandra Steingraber, a biologist, author and a leader of the anti-fracking movement in New York. She said their destinies are intertwined, because LNG exports would lead to an increase in fracking. She noted the success of a movement to ban liquified natural gas production in New York State following an explosion in Staten Island in 1973 that killed 40 people. She said the safety concerns remain, but what has changed is that in 1973 people didn’t know yet about climate change and had never heard of fracking. So the stakes are even higher today.
“To the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and to President Obama, we say we are not willing to blow up the bedrock of our nation in order to extract a fossil fuel called methane, that will in turn blow up our climate,” Steingraber told the crowd gathered for the rally. “We are not willing to liquefy the results, using more fossil fuels, and so give methane a passport to foreign markets and so give methane a passport to foreign markets and so further entrench a fossil fuel dependency around the globe and so further entrench a fossil fuel dependency around the globe in a time of climate emergency. We say No to that!”
Mike Tidwell of CCAN said FERC does more to facilitate the production of natural gas than to regulate it. “They facilitate fossil fuel projects. They’ve never denied a major electrical or gas project ever presented to them – ever. So they’re an isolated, non-responsive commission that does not take into account public safety or health and instead all they do is try to further the profits of the fossil fuel industry.”
Plans to increase the nation’s natural gas export infrastructure come as Europe’s largest gas supplier – Russia – is locked in a dispute with Ukraine, where key pipelines carrying Russian gas to Central and Western Europe are located. Are export facilities like the one in Cove Point meant to step in to fill a need at a moment of political crisis?
In a phone interview before Sunday’s rally, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, explained how the business works: “All the trade from LNG exports are going to be typically structured as 20-year, locked in deals, where nearly all of the export capacity is already slated for specific customers. Not a single bit of this is slated to go to Ukraine or anything like that. These are not national determinations; these are private marketplace determinations, depending upon who negotiates the supply agreements.”[NO WAY DO I BELIEVE THAT. AS IF CORPORATE AMERICA WILL BE PRECLUDED FROM ENTERING INTO *NEW* SUPPLY CONTRACTS.]
FERC’s decision is expected in the next several months. The Maryland Public Service Commission must also given an opinion on whether the proposed LNG export facility is in the public’s interest.
FULL @ - SOURCE - FREE SPEECH RADIO NEWS - here.
Plans to increase the nation’s natural gas export infrastructure come as Europe’s largest gas supplier – Russia – is locked in a dispute with Ukraine, where key pipelines carrying Russian gas to Central and Western Europe are located. Are export facilities like the one in Cove Point meant to step in to fill a need at a moment of political crisis?
State of Qatar is a sovereign Arab country, located in Western Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the north-easterly coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf.
Qatar is home to USA's biggest military base in the Middle East.
[Blogger's note: Historically has been under British and Ottoman rule.]
Qatar was also an early member of OPEC and a founding member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is a member of the Arab League. The country has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction.
Qatar hosts the Al Udeid Air Base, which acts as the hub for all American air operations in the Persian Gulf. Qatar has bilateral relationships with a variety of foreign powers. It has allowed American forces to use an air base to send supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Qatar signed a defence co-operation agreement with Saudi Arabia, with whom it shares the largest single non-associated gas field in the world.
It was the second nation, the first being France, to have publicly announced its recognition of the Libyan opposition's National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya amidst the 2011 Libyan civil war. Qatar's relations with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are strained, owing to the perceived closeness between the Qatari government and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Qatar Armed Forces are the military forces of Qatar. The country maintains a modest military force ...
Qatar has recently signed defence pacts with the United States and United Kingdom, as well as with France earlier in 1994.
Qatar plays an active role in the collective defence efforts of the Gulf Cooperation Council; the other five members are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman.
The presence of a large American military base in the country provides the country with a guaranteed source of defence and national security.
In 2008 Qatar spent US$2.355 billion on military expenditures, 2.3% of the gross domestic product. Qatari special forces have been trained by French and other Western countries,... also helped the Libyan rebels during the 2011 Battle of Tripoli.
Oil was discovered in Qatar in 1940, in Dukhan Field. The discovery transformed the state's economy. Now, the country has a high standard of living. With no income tax, Qatar (along with Bahrain) is one of the countries with the lowest tax rates in the world. The unemployment rate in June 2013 was 0.1%.
Qatar has the highest GDP per capita in the world as of 2013, according to the CIA World Factbook and approximately 14% of households are dollar millionaires.
In 2012, Qatar retained its title of richest country in the world (according to per capita income) for the third time in a row, having first overtaken Luxembourg in 2010.
Oil production will not long remain at peak levels ... as oil fields are projected to be mostly depleted by 2023.
However, large natural gas reserves have been located off Qatar's north-east coast.
Qatar's proved reserves of gas are the third-largest in the world...
1991 ... North Field gas development.
1996 ... Qatargas ..... began exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan.
Further phases of North Field gas development costing billions of dollars are in various stages of planning and development.[wikipedia]
Anti-fracking activists rally with opponents of LNG export ...
Free Speech Radio News - 9 hours ago
That's leading anti-fracking groups to form an alliance with opponent of LNG export terminals. Melinda Tuhus reports from D.C
...[I've not read the Free Speech Radio New's story, so I haven't linked. It's just what come up on my Google.]
The geopolitical consequences of the shale revolution transcend periodic, regionally specific crises such as Ukraine or Iran (where U.S. sanctions have been able to bite exactly because of growing North American oil and gas supplies entering world markets).
Aside from physical exports, U.S. shale expertise may well help Europe diversify its energy sources away from Russia, too. There’s talk of exploiting significant shale basins in Britain, France, Germany, Poland and, yes, Ukraine. According to NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen, Russian intelligence has sought ways to co-opt European environmental NGOs that oppose hydraulic fracturing.
Ever since the early 1970s, the dominant motif has posited “energy needs” with “energy vulnerability,” as the United States became the major global oil importer. This vulnerability has rested heavily on our thinking about security, itself a legacy of oil embargoes from that era. Today, the shale revolution is changing that calculus.
New trends, such as the revival of energy-intensive U.S. industries and a distinct improvement in our terms of trade, reflect the still-surprising energy abundance accelerating since 2005. Future natural gas exports and high-value North American shale expertise will play an ever larger part of the geopolitical long game. This new game has only started and, for a change, we seem to have a winning hand.
James Clad, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia, consults for energy and investment firms and is senior adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses and at Jane’s Defence and Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
FULL - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - here.
"Another criticism of NGOs is that they are being designed and used as extensions of the normal foreign-policy instruments of certain Western countries and groups of countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made this accusation at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, concluding that these NGOs "are formally independent but they are purposefully financed and therefore under control. [wikipedia]"
